It is no secret that consumers in the UK have had to wait for the availability of a 4G LTE network to take advantage of all the new mobile technology being released, and in some cases getting a 3G signal is not always easy anyway. Recently though EE formerly Everything Everywhere, launched the country’s first 4G network, but this has been found to be patchy in tests even where there is supposed to be coverage.

There was some excitement from consumers when the network first revealed a 4G service was coming to the country before the end of the year, despite the cost of it. Now though according to the BBC it seems the fledgling network is far from being glitch free.

The city of Manchester is one of the areas to be part of the new service since it was first switched on, but on testing only 40.2 percent of locations within the city had access to LTE, while just outside of the town there was no 4G service at all.

Testing was carried out by a company called RootMetric and it says the situation is similar to what was seen in the US when new 4G networks first went online with 30 to 60 percent of coverage. It was also found that the service provided quicker speeds while indoors that rival carriers had said would happen when the network was first launched.

Where the service was tested users saw download speeds that averaged 17Mbps, but across all the locations speeds averaged 7.6Mbps, which is still twice the speed that was seen on the Vodafone network in the same area with speeds of 3.1Mbps.

This would mean that users could download a music track in about 15 to 25 seconds compared to sixty seconds via a 3G network, and other results found that 31 percent saw speeds of over 10Mbps, 23 percent 1.5 to 3 Mbps, 9 percent 6 to 10Mps, and 18 percent saw speeds of 3 to 6Mbps.

The launch saw eleven cities in the country given 4G LTE access with plans to have this up to sixteen by the end of the year, and the tests were carried out this month using a Samsung Galaxy S3.

Meanwhile the carrier has recently launched some SIM only 4G data plans that begins at £21 per month that will get you 500MB of data, and go all the way up to £36 per month for 5GB, all of these are on condition of a twelve month contract with the carrier.

Have you signed up to EE’s 4G LTE network?